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- Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced the setting up of a task force which will help to plan for the “effective participation” of Indian sports persons in the next three Olympics, to be held in 2020, 2024 and 2028. The medal tally this year came down from 6 in the London Olympics, to just 2.
- The Union Finance Ministry has constituted an 11-member high-level committee to suggest steps to promote card payments with an aim to discourage cash transactions. The 11-member committee will be headed by Principle Adviser for social sector in the NITI Aayog and former Finance Secretary Ratan P Watal.
- According to the National Health Accounts’ estimates, Indians spent eight times more on private hospitals and twice as much on transport patients compared to costs in government hospitals.
- The first convocation ceremony of Nalanda University will be breaking away from tradition by using convocation gowns made of Khadi, rather than the heavy velvet material used in Western tradition. President Pranab Mukherjee will hand over the degrees.
- A life-size bronze statue of Mother Teresa was unveiled on the lawns of the Archbishop House in Kolkata, nine days before her canonisation, and on her 106th birth anniversary. Mother Teresa is to be declared a saint on the 4th of September.
- S. N. Subrahmanyan, Deputy Managing Director and President, Larsen & Toubro (L&T) will take over as the organisation’s chairman, replacing A.M. Naik. L&T is a prominent engineering and construction company.
- Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd announced the introduction of ‘Mahindra DiGiSENSE’, a technology solution that connects the Mahindra range of vehicles to the cloud to enable vehicle owners to have complete information on the location and usage their assets on their mobile phones. The software is jointly developed in India by Tech Mahindra, Bosch India and Vodafone. Mahindra has become the first in India to integrate its product line-up onto a cloud-based technology platform.
- France’s highest administrative court has suspended the ban on the ‘burkini‘. The burkini is a bathing suit that covers the body, and had been banned in a coastal French town. The Court noted that authorities could restrict individual liberties only if there are “proven risks” to public order. French Police have fined Muslim women for wearing burkinis, or full-body swimwear, on beaches in several towns, including in the popular tourist resorts of Nice and Cannes, sparking controversy in France and abroad. The burkini bans have triggered a fierce debate about women’s rights and the French state’s strictly-guarded secularism.
- An assassination attempt on German Chancellor Angela Merkel has reportedly been foiled in Prague, in the Czech Republic.
- Scientists in Japan studying earthquakes have detected a rare deep-Earth tremor, known as an S (secondary) wave microseism, for the first time. Microseisms are very faint tremors. The detection was made by scientists from the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention in Japan.
- The USA will soon create the world’s largest protected marine reserve area named as the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument off the Hawaiian coast. The existing national monument will be quadrupled in size.
- Pakistan is set to host the 19th SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) Summit in Islamabad on the 9th and 10th of November. It will be a meeting of the heads of state of the 8 SAARC countries.
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